Abstract:

In the technology-based economies, the industry based projects are critically important in order to improve the quality of production and services with the help of the best universities contemporary activities. Even though some best elite universities in the world, like Stanford University and MIT, can collaborate efficiently and effectively with the industry, most of the Engineering Departments in Turkey cannot collaborate with the industry as other best elite universities in the world.

Hence, in this study, the main drawbacks of the Engineering Departments were critically analyzed in order to improve the collaboration by increasing industry-based projects at the Engineering Departments. The participants (46) from four different Engineering Departments at two different universities participated in this study.In order to understand the hidden reasons, the data were collected from semi-structured interviews using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The analysis had two themes, which were described here. The first theme provided a detailed perspective of the drawbacks of the industry-oriented projects at the engineering departments. The second theme examined how the industry-based projects would be increased.

Under the first theme, the data showed that most (85%) of the participants did not have any idea and deep knowledge about how they could conduct industry-based projects since they were far away from the realities of the industry. Additionally, all the participants were not aware about the needs of the industry, particularly those institutions, which were close to their university. Furthermore, a few (21%) participants who collaborated with the industry failed in their projects due to the fact that they could not be tangible for the contemporary needs of the industry. More importantly, their projects were not highly competitive for the global market. In addition to all these drawbacks, those projects, which were taken into account by the industry, had minor or no impact on industries productivity or competitiveness. Therefore, the industry did not want to spend money on R&D at the universities. Although the Engineering Departments had been supplying human capital by graduating many engineers, the participants agreed that they could not help strategically their graduates by conducting industry-oriented projects. More importantly, as the participants mentioned that a few graduates came back to the departments to ask help. Consequently, according to the participants (96%) the collaboration between the university and industry was not established and developed in Turkey as it was seen at the best universities in the world.

Under the second theme, however,the participant clearly addressed how they could improve the collaboration between the university and industry. All the participants agreed that there should be mutual collaboration by developing mutual benefits for both sides. In order to develop this collaboration, the participants pointed out the team leaders from each side since they could not find enough time to understand the real needs of the industry. They strongly suggested the field studies by sending the students of the departments to the real environments. Instead of laboratories at the universities, they preferred the laboratories of the companies in order to make their students observe the needs.

Keywords:

University Industry Collaboration, technology Transfer, Industry based Projects.